Saturday, July 15, 2006

Mayor Nickels needs to "Man Up"

I heard on the radio, KTTH, yesterday morning, that Mayor Nickels made a statement about how strip club are linked to organized crime. He also said they do not make their money on Pepsi. No sh!t Sherlock? Nothing gets by the Mayor of Seattle. This mornings Seattle Times said he did not backtrack from that comment.

If the City of Seattle has businesses that are linked to organized crime and the Mayor knows this... shouldn't the Mayor being doing something about it like shutting down the business or arresting the criminals? Isn't that part of his job? Does he not have the phone number to the Chief of Police?

I really do not care if strip clubs are banned or not. I do not go to them, I do not know anyone who admits going to them, I do not know anyone who works for them. They do not affect me or my life. As long as they are not in my neighborhood or by my kids school, I really do not care. What I do care about is government officials who make reckless statements they can not back up. I care about government shutting down a legal business through regulations because they do not like it. If you do not want strip clubs around, outlaw them. Be man enough to step up to the plate and get a law passed outlawing strip clubs. Businesses that are legal should be permitted to operate within reason and the proposed strip club regulations do not allow that.

We have a saying in our family, although I think it originally came from my brother in law, "man up". It means to show your cards, do something, make a decision, you are in or out. Mayor Nickels needs to man up and show the evidence that strip clubs have ties to organized crime and then do something about it or else he needs to retract his statement. Mayor Nickels needs to decide if strip clubs should be allowed to operate as strip clubs in Seattle and then either let them do so or ban them.

3 comments:

Man up? For Nickels, the entire issue is driven by the orthodox feminists activists that keep Seattle as their stronghold. According to these miserably unhappy women, stip bars are a result of "patriarchal control and oppression." Never mind that, in reality, it seems the gals that work in these places actually have the control, since they are getting guys to pay them for doing nothing more than dancing naked. Maybe if you couch it as "fem up" or something ...

As for the "organized crime" angle, if the mafia is involve in strip clubs, it's only because there are so few. City regulations have created little monopolies of the strip clubs allowed to operate. That makes them extremely profitable and thus attracts organized crime. Allow more and they would have to compete and their profits would go down. The mafia would move on (if, indeed, it really is involved).